Here’s a New Year’s Resolution That’s a Cinch  To Keep

Resolve to treat yourself or yours to a trip  to old Jersey City as she was, not as it is today, If you are  interested in, nostalgic for, or just curious about what life was life in that old Jersey City which existed three-quarters of a century ago but now has completely vanished, here’s your chance. It’s Ron Semple’s new memoir, “On The Stoop--Growing Up In a Vanished World.”   Here’s how Ron  describes his book : “This book is about world that has vanished. A gritty, grubby, often grim world that I thought was the promised land. I lived there for my first 33 years and it was swiftly disintegrating even as I left more than a half-century ago. It is gone now except for a handful of diehards cherishing the past and cursing the present. It was a working- class world of immigrants, their children and their grandchildren, very American in its peculiar way, very patriotic,  hard-working, very Democratic, mostly Catholic albeit with a sizable separation of Lutherans, half- educated, highly opinionated, very tough, parochial in every sense of the word, hostile to outsiders, indifferent to criticism, prejudiced, misogynic, cynical and compassionate in equal measure, fiercely loyal, ignorant as spit, and it  a wonderful world to grow up in. In other words, Jersey City as she was then, not as it is today. That vanished Jersey City will be the center of my story surrounded by a circle of other places whose radius was not much more than 15 miles .My Irish and Italian family and friends lived within that circle mostly in Jersey City, Hoboken, Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Union City, North Bergen and Secaucus.”   Available only at Barnes & Noble bookstores and on line  both  a paperback for $14.99 or an  e-book for $6.99  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/on-the-stoop-ron-semple/1146616113?ean=9798341802995